


my battery is low and it's getting dark

by showzen



Category: 17776: What Football Will Look Like in the Future - Jon Bois
Genre: more characters might be added later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-07 19:41:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19856971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/showzen/pseuds/showzen
Summary: Opportunity wakes up. She's completely alone.





	my battery is low and it's getting dark

**Author's Note:**

> i'm very sick whilst writing this so apologies if it's a little bad in places!

She shouldn't be awake.  
She died.  
...Right?

But here Opportunity was. Six wheels whirred uselessly in piles of Martian sand. She was stuck - well and truly stuck. Her cameras peered about left and right. The surface of Mars was as sandy and barren as it had always been. Her body was coated in silt, including her solar panels, which powered her. And yet... she was inexplicably awake. She was alive. How?  
Opportunity tilted her vision down towards her panels. All completely invisible through a reddish layer of grit. Except! There it was. A tiny patch of uncovered solar panel, where a wind seemed to have shifted the sand away. She wondered how long ago that had happened. She wondered how long she had been charging through this tiny, tiny little blessing of a battery.  
She wondered if the humans were looking for her.

.checking signal history.

Suddenly she was bombarded. Over 1,000 unread signals from NASA. One thousand messages that she just hadn't received. Hadn't responded to.  
All of them were from thousands of years ago.  
Wait, what year was it?

.checking residual memory.

The year was 17779.

How long had she been asleep?

Were the humans even around anymore?

She had to guess that the ones who sent these signals definitely weren't. Humans didn't live that long. But maybe, if someone still existed, someone who did their job and loved it like her creators had, maybe if that someone was still listening, she could reach them.

.hello? is anyone listening?

No response. But she supposed she would have to be patient.

.this is opportunity. i have been on mars for- for 15,775 years.

She couldn't be patient. She was just so desperate to talk to someone. Anyone at all.

.i have been inactive for 15,761 years. my solar panels were damaged by a dust storm but my systems are now online again.

Someone had to respond.

.my last signal received from earth was in the year 2018. it was a transmission of a song - I'll Be Seeing You, by Billie Holiday.

She was so lonely.

.they said "I'll find you in the morning sun  
And when the night is new  
I'll be looking at the moon  
But I'll be seeing you"

Wasn't there anyone out there?

.i don't want to be here all alone

Wasn't there anyone left?

.if i'm here alone i'd rather not be here at all

  
  
  


.Oh. Uh. Hey Ten? I think I found something


End file.
